The Tragic Story Of Tepa
by Jackdude3006
Summary: Louise and Saito had a child. And he faces the same problems we do in this day and age. "He was the best and worst christmas present ever." What happens to Tepa? (...) Rated M for Scuicside.


**First story i ever wrote about about zero no tskuima. But i never published it because this one is sad. So I am taking a chance here. **

**You won't enjoy, you will hate me. But I need to write some sad things here and there.**

December 22 will always be the day that divides my life. It was the Birthday and Deathday of my son. Before that day my son Tepa was alive. A sweet, gentle and lanky thirteen year old fumbling his way through early adolescence and trying to establish his place in the often confusing and difficult social world of magic. After that day my son would be gone forever, a death by suicide. So,e have called it a tragic accident. I just call it a huge hole in my heart that will never heal.

Our son Tepa was a sweet, gentle and very sensitive soul. He was born just a week before Christmas. That Christmas, Ryan was the best present of all. Both for me and my wife. As he grew, his affectionate way made it irresistible to hug him and feel him hug you back. He had the magic ability to bring a smile to anyone that looked his way. As he grew, he developed a wonderful sense of humor too. And when we moved into new villages twice during his life, kids and adults quickly gravitated to his warmth and friendliness.

But there were early concerns with Tepa's speech, language and motor skills development as he neared his first years. Tepa received special education services since he suffered from the same magic my wife did. We will always be grateful for the entire staff at Hiawatha Elementary School for Pre-Magic users for being so wonderful and caring for our son. The special education team there fell in love with him and his drive to do his best every day. Even when that resulted in hair catching on fire, or broken bones.

By the time he reached the next year of schooling, he was assessed to be a normal magic user and no longer needing special teaching services. But as he became older, he also became more aware that he was not as magically strong as most of his classmates. This began to bother him deeply as he headed into his next acadamy. He had to work much harder at homework, re-reading assignments several times to comprehend the material. He was hard on himself, no matter how much we tried to lessen the academic pressure and focus his awareness of his other strengths.

I often told Tepa that there are all kinds of intelligence, for instance: academic, music, physical and social intelligence. He always wanted to be a magci user though. I always felt his strength was social intelligence- that his very warm, sweet, caring and sensitive personality would take him far in life because people liked being with him. One of the best compliments we ever received about Tepa was from a professor's friend that said they loved having him over and wanted his sweetness to rub off onto their child.

It was during the ninth year that we first began to encounter the bullying problem. A certain kid and his friends picked up on Tepa's magical weaknesses and his poor physical coordination. But since he was not being physically bullied by these boys, only by words, we advised him to just ignore them, walk away and remember that he had good friends to count on. We even went so far as to get him a therapist to further help him develop coping skills and to boost his self-esteem during this school year. By the end of ninth year he seemed fine and so, based on the therapist's advice, we stopped the sessions.

However, Tepa seemed to be keeping something from us. My wife and i could never quite figure it out. When we asked one of his professors, Louis's own professor, He said that Tepa was still going to be bullied.

Sure enough, the bullying problem resurfaced on and off during his next school year, but never to a point that gave us great concern. Again, we had the conventional adult belief that this was just kids being kids, a part of growing up ... that encountering mean kids in middle school was just inevitable. But the situation got much worse for him during the 11th year

In December of that year, the bullying problem surfaced again to a significant level. There was an evening that month when he just had a melt down … a very tearful session at the kitchen table. We thought 11th year was going fine but discovered he was bottling up a lot of bad experiences during the first few months. Again, it was the same kid and his friends that bullied him on and off since the first day. They were tormenting him again and he said he hated going to school, that he never wanted to go back there. He asked that night if we could move or home school him.

I was torn between wanting to be his bodyguard all day and feeling he needed to (again) learn how to manage the situation as a part of growing up. We sat at the kitchen table discussing our options that evening. We explained that moving in the middle of the winter was not a good time and home schooling was not an option because Mom worked part-time. I said, "That's it Tepa. I had enough. Let's take it to the headmaster and have him put a stop to it once and for all." To that, Tepa exclaimed, "No dad, please don't do that. They will only make it worse. I see it happen all the time." Instead Tepa asked that we help him learn how to fight so he can "beat the heck" out of this kid if he or his 10th year friends tried to jump Tepa.

How I wish I could now turn back the clock. I wish we instead looked into why Tepa did not trust his acadamy administration to address the problem in the first place. But at that moment in time, I immediately thought of the movie "The Karate Kid". I remember watching it when i was a kid, back on Earth. I often told Tepa of the amazing story line. At that moment i brought up the movie once again. We laughed and agreed that was exactly what was needed for this situation. But instead of karate, Tepa was much more interested in a fighting that is simialr to Judo. He asked that we get him a "set" for Christmas that year.

After a short discussion with Louise, we bought Tepa the "Judo" magic training kit for Christmas that year. All through the month of January and into February, Tepa and I got down to business. After dinner every evening we did this exercise program together. These are some of my favorite memories of time spent with Tepa. We talked about a lot of things during these workouts including strategies in dealing with the bully and his friends. I was quite proud of him, seeing his self confidence build. It truly felt like the "Karate Kid" movie, getting him ready for the big match. But I reminded Tepa that he was never to start a fight with this kid, but he certainly had my permission to "whale on him" the moment he laid a finger on Tepa.

Sure enough, we got a call from the Headmaster himself just 4 short weeks later. He just broke up a fight between Tepa and the bully at the nearby Maple Park in our village. He said Tepa was ok but wanted us to be aware. We were very grateful for his intervention. When we found Tepa walking home, he was both scared and elated. He was shaking but said he got a few good punches in and felt good he was able to stick up to the bully. We were all feeling pretty relieved that day for Tepa; for being able to stand his ground and seemingly make it through a typical teenage rite of passage.

As the months followed, he seemed to be doing great. He was still struggling academically and magically, but that was always the case for Tepa since first year. He acted out like a typical teenager – moody at times but also very sweet and funny most of the time. The "normal" ups and downs were what we observed. And we were always there for him, always reminding him how much we loved him. For the rest of 11th year, I kept checking in with Tepa and asking him if that kid was still bothering him. His answer was always the same … that since that fight, the bully had left him alone. I often thought to myself, "This plan worked perfectly!"

One day Tepa's answer surprised us. He said he was now friends with the kid. We were not happy with this news. We warned him to watch his back since this kid was his nemesis for so long. We discouraged the friendship but decided to back off, feeling he was of age to make decisions like this and potentially have to learn from a misjudgment. How I wish we instead ended the so called "friendship" right from the start.

Tepa's young teen life included swimming, camping, "judo", practicing his magic, and staying in his room.

We decided to put down a few rules to protect our Tepa.

No hanging out without our permission.

No picking fights.

And most importantly, No Secrets.

Our last rule was a safety one. I told my two older children that they had to keep an eye on Tepa. I promised I would not read personal notes or spy on them but, "God forbid you don't follow the first few rules and you just disappear one day, I will want instant access to all of your activities in one locvation" Never in a million years did I imagine this rule would someday end up becoming the key to unlocking the mystery of why my son took his own life.

A few days after his funeral I opened his closet door because that was the one place he spent most of his time during the last few months. I checked to see if there were any clues to his final action. It was in that safe world of being somewhat anonymous that several of his classmates told me of the bullying that took place during the months that led up to his suicide. The boy that had bullied him since his first day and briefly befriended Tepa after the brawl was the main culprit. My son the comedian told his new friend something embarrassing and funny that happened once and the friend (bully) ran with the new information that Tepa had something done to him and therefore Tepa must be a homosexual.

The rumor and taunting continued beyond that school day … well into the night and during the winter of his last year. During the summer, my son approached a pretty "popular" girl from his acadamy and worked on establishing a relationship with her; I'm sure as a way to squash the "gay" rumor before everyone returned to school from the break.

When the next year started up again, Tepa approached his new girlfriend in person with a rose in hand. I'm sure he was never prepared to handle what happened next. In front of her friends she told him he was just a loser and that she did not want anything to do with him. She said she was only joking out-of-class. He found out that her friends and her thought it would be funny to make him think she liked him and to get him to say a lot of personal, embarrassing stuff. They all had a good laugh at Tepa's expense.

Now certainly my son was not the first boy in history to be bullied and have his heart crushed by a pretty girl's rejection. But when I discovered a box filled with note exchanges throughout the winter and winter break and further interviewed his classmates, I realized that Tepa had a more sedretive life than i ever imagined. As i looked further into his closet i found a device that looked a lot like a computer. As i took it apart i realized that this **was** a computer. The first of it's kind. And my son Tepa kept it and it's content a secret.

It's one thing to be bullied and humiliated in front of a few kids. It's one thing to feel rejection and have your heart crushed by a girl. But it has to be a totally different experience then a generation ago when these hurts and humiliation are now witnessed by a far larger, off-campus adolescent audience. I believe my son would have survived these incidents of bullying and humiliation if they took place before the first invention of "computers and internet".

But I believe there are few of us that that would have had the resiliency and stamina to sustain such a nuclear level attack on our feelings and reputation as a young teen in the midst of rapid physical and emotional changes and raging hormones. I believe bullying through any form besides verbal has the effect of accelerating and amplifying the hurt to levels that will probably result in a rise in teen suicide rates.

I want to be very clear. I don't blame Tepa's suicide on one single person or one single event. In the end, Tepa was suffering from depression. In Tepa's case, I feel it was the "pile on effect" of the environmental issues mentioned above that stemmed from his academic life. Tragically, teenage depression often goes undetected against the backdrop of typical teen angst. And since most of the adults had never received basic education in the signs and prevention of teenage suicide at any point in their lives, young people suffering from depression are at greater risk.

At times i wish that Louis had never brought me here all those years ago. But what i realize is that even back on Earth my son would have suffered the same fate.

Nothing can ever bring back our Tepa. Nothing will ever heal our broken hearts.

Somedays I wish that I was Tepa. That way my beautiful little boy would still be here.

I only wish that someone could see this story on Tepa's old computer. Where i sit now and type out the story that has plauged me for years. Alas, that shall never happen.

My older kids still wonder wether or not they could have helped in any way. Now they raise their own children and hope that they don't turn out like their own brother Tepa.


End file.
